Before They Were Beat: Murder and Poetry and a New Film

Hal Chasse, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs (l. to r.) on the campus of Columbia University, 1945

One of the most spectacular episodes in the early lives of the writers who went on to become the novelists and poets of the Beat Generation is coming to the screen.

"Kill Your Darlings" is the name of a film written by Austin Bunn and John Krokidas concerning the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr, a Columbia University student who had been pursued sexually by Kammerer and stabbed him to death one night while fending him off. Carr, whose friends at Columbia included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs (who wasn't connected to the school), dumped Kammerer's body in the Hudson River and spent a couple days deciding whether or not to confess to the murder. When he finally did, a sensational trial followed, and Carr served two years in prison before becoming an editor at United Press International and a family man (among his children is the bestselling novelist Caleb Carr).

This is crackerjack movie material and while I know nothing of Bunn or Krokidas or their work, I take it as a good thing that Christine Vachon, who has produced "I Shot Andy Warhol," "Savage Grace" and "The Notorious Betty Page" -- not to mention the complete works of Todd Haynes -- is shepherding the project.